Potential MA topics in History of Philosophy

Areas of expertise

The Chair of History of Philosophy has developed expertise to supervise MA projects in the following areas:

Ancient Greek philosophy

Early Modern philosophy

19th- and 20th-century German philosophy

20th-century French philosophy

Roomet Jakapi: potential topics for supervision

1. Theories of the mind/soul in early modern philosophy

René Descartes, Selected Philosophical Writings (1988)

Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, So farre forth as it is demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason (1659)

John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Essays (1989)

2. Theology and natural philosophy in early modern thought

Robert Boyle, Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle (1991)

William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, From its Original, to the Consummation of all Things. Wherein the Creation of the World in Six Days, the Universal Deluge, And the General Conflagration, As laid down in the Holy Scriptures, Are Shewn to be Perfectly Agreeable to Reason and Philosophy (1696)

3. The deist controversy

John Toland, Christianity not mysterious: Or, a treatise shewing, that there is nothing in the gospel contrary to reason, nor above it: and that no Christian doctrine can be properly call’d a mystery (1696)

Peter Browne, A letter in answer to a book entitled Christianity not mysterious (1697)

George Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues; Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion, Against Those Who Are Called Free-Thinkers (1732)

Toomas Lott: potential topics for supervision

Epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Ancient rhetoric, sophists

Ancient medical authors (esp. the Hippocratic corpus)

Hellenistic philosophy

Epistemology

Ethics of belief. Are there norms of belief? What are they? How do they interact with other norms?

Epistemology of disagreement. Should one change one’s mind if one is confronted with a disagreeing peer?

Inquiry and belief. What is the aim of inquiry – is it belief, knowledge or understanding?

Expertise and epistemic authority. When, if ever, is one justified in surrendering one’s judgment and treating others as authorities?

Beliefs and credences. Are there grades of belief or credences? Are full beliefs simply credences that pass a certain threshold?

Jaanus Sooväli: potential topics for supervision

The Coming of Western Nihilism

Friedrich Nietzsche

Gianni Vattimo

Martin Heidegger

Philosophy and/as Genealogy

Friedrich Nietzsche

Michel Foucault

Bernard Williams

Philosophy of Existence / Existentialism

Sören Kierkegaard

Friedrich Nietzsche

Martin Heidegger

Jean-Paul Sartre

Albert Camus

Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sigmund Freud

Carl Gustav Jung

Jordan Peterson

Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida

Michel Foucault

Emmanuel Levinas

Gilles Deleuze

Eduard Parhomenko: potential topics for supervision

Phenomenological reduction in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty

Edmund Husserl. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. General Intoduction to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. F. Kersten. Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.

Research projects

Below is a short overview of the research projects that the Chair of History of Philosophy is involved with – these topics are opportunities to offer students hands-on research experience and supervision.

Disagreements

1. Determining religious disagreements. Religious disagreements are common and often embody exclusivist views. Questions about truth and objectivity can be seen as transcendental and unanswerable. In philosophy of religion, these issues transform into questions about the rationality of particular religious beliefs, which – to some extent – can be defended or opposed by means of philosophical argument. We assess the rationality of religious beliefs by analysis of historical case studies, especially by looking at religious disagreements in Early Modern metaphysics. The aim is to determine whether philosophical analysis of religious doctrines can provide a rationale for religious beliefs and in turn contribute to solving religious disagreements, which can then be seen as genuine disagreements.

2. Resolving peer disagreements. In contemporary epistemology revisionists claim that one should withhold judgment when peer disagreement occurs (i.e. disagreement with someone with roughly the same evidence and the same intellectual abilities). The non-revisionists argue that one has no such obligation. We will offer a historical perspective on this currently hotly debated topic. We analyze arguments by Ancient sceptics for their revisionist position and show that they are relevant for the contemporary discussion of peer disagreement. An important premise for the sceptics’ revisionist argument is the principle according to which one has the epistemic duty to treat one’s beliefs impartially. Contemporary non-revisionists tend to deny this principle of impartiality, e.g. by invoking the notion of “intellectual self-trust”.

Conceptions of the Soul and Immortality in the British Thought from 1640 to 1740.

The project is concerned with the conceptions of human soul put forward by British thinkers in the period of 1640-1740. In particular, it proposes to study their philosophical-theological accounts of the soul in its post-mortal states. Modern scholarly literature on the Early Modern conceptions of the soul focuses mainly on the soul in its present, embodied state. In this way, the modern scholarship tends to ignore an important aspect of their views, for Early Modern philosophers were equally interested in soul’s immortality and afterlife. They produced numerous accounts of the separate/intermediate as well as final state of the soul. No systematic research has been done on these accounts to be found in the works of British thinkers. The project aims to expound, compare and analyze the views and arguments concerning the future states of souls in their textual and intellectual context.